New Scaratings

There's a new Legends six game pack, "Legends of the Cursed", out there now. I've only tried the "Alexander the Great: The Secrets of Power" game. I'm almost done with it, and it's pretty easy.

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"The game is afoot."

I'm pretty far into "Dark Tales: Edgar Allan Poe's The Gold Bug", and will probably finish it tomorrow. It's a fun game, and not very difficult. It does have a hidden object screen every once in a while, but they are so far apart that they don't become a boring nuisance. It is mostly a problem solving game, with puzzles that aren't too hard to solve. I think this is a game worth playing, and you won't need to use a walkthrough to finish it.

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"The game is afoot."

I ran across "Virtual Console" tonight. "Zombies Ate My Neighbors" (1993) is one of my favorite games of all time. I only have it for Sega Genesis, and always hoped that a PC version of it would be created that I could play on my computer. As the years rolled by, I gave up, until I read this:

http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2009/0 ... _this_time

Zombies Ate My Neighbors Heading to Virtual Console for Real This Time?

Posted Thu 24th Sep 2009 07:15 by Marcel van Duyn
The most oblivious neighbors of all time!
The most oblivious neighbors of all time!

The OFLC seems to think so.

In the latest OFLC update, fans of LucasArts will find that one of their most requested games seems to be on its way to the Virtual Console at long last.

Zombies Ate My Neighbors is an awesome SNES and Mega Drive game in which you play as one or two teenagers attempting to rescue their neighbors from zombies, mummies, vampires, aliens and other classic movie monsters. You've got a huge arsenal to accomplish this - Everything from squirt guns, to bazookas, flamethrowers, exploding soda cans and even Pandora's box.

With over 55 sizeable levels, including hidden ones, highly addictive gameplay, a great soundtrack and more, it's quite easy to see why fans have wanted it on the Virtual Console for so long. We are assuming that it's the SNES version, so that LucasArts can keep in line with their Super Star Wars games.

Before the Wii was even released, the game was given a rating by North America's ESRB, along with multiple other games, which lead many to believe that it was going to be released on Virtual Console shortly after the Wii was out - But those ratings were later removed, indicating that it must've been a mistake of some kind. Worry no longer though, because it seems that this time, it's finally coming!

[via oflc.gov.au]

What is "Virtual Console"? How doI get it? How does it work? Is this something that will allow me to play "Zombies Ate My Neighbors" on my Windows computer operating system? If so, How do I do it?

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"The game is afoot."

I picked up three new Big Fish games today. They are:

"Spirits of Mystery: Song of the Phoenix"

"Spirits of Mystery: The Dark Minotaur"

"Cursed Memories: Secret of Agony Creek"

Haven't played them yet, but when I do, if they are any good, I'll let you know.

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"The game is afoot."

There's another new Legends six pack game CD out there, "Legends of the Spirits". Haven't played any of them yet, but if any of them are any good, I'll let you know.

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"The game is afoot."

"Spirits of Mystery: Song of the Phoenix" is a Big Fish game. It is a very good game, and I recommend it those, who enjoy puzzle and problem solving. Some of the puzzles are pretty tough, and you might want to skip a few of them. (I did.) This is a game where you need to remember what you left behind, and where it was, as a lot of backtracking is involved. What makes it more difficult is that there are so many places and rooms where you have been, that you will need to go back to.



It's a long game, and you will get your money's worth out of it in hours of challenging game play.

Here's some video of game play:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYVqSgg6Ik0

p.s. You can get it on a Big Fish two-pack with another great "Spirits of Mystery" game, "The Dark Minotaur".

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"The game is afoot."

"Spirits of Mystery: The Dark Minotaur" is the Big Fish game that comes on the same CD as the "Song of the Phoenix". They are very similar in game play, and the comments I had for the "Song of the Phoenix", are the same for this game.



Here's some video of "The Dark Minotaur":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDhxBLPfuEA

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"The game is afoot."

I think I'm pretty damn good at solving computer game puzzles, but there is one type that I always skip.

The puzzles that involve restoring a circular image with four or five concentric rings that you have to move around each other to create the picture aren't too tough, if that is all you have to do. However, on the ones, when moving one ring to the right place moves another ring to the wrong place at the same time is not fun for me. When I run into one of these one click moves two rings puzzles, I will give it a totally guessing try, until the "skip puzzle" option finally lights up. Then I skip it to move on. (Sometimes skipping a puzzle lowers your score, or penalizes you in some way, but I will take a lower score or a penalty to be able to move on to having fun.)

If anyone knows the trick to beat these multi-ring moving puzzles, I would love to know what it is.

I never played this one, but this is what the solution to this circular ring puzzle looks like:

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"The game is afoot."

"Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island" is one of my favorite computer games of all time, but I believe it has a problem. Once you have installed the CD to one computer, the CD will NOT install again to any other computer.

Some time ago, I lost everything I had on the computer that I am now using, and had to have my hardrive re-formated, due to a virus. Everything was gone, and I had to reinstall everything from square one. After much work, I was able to reinstall all of the games, except "Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island", which would no longer run after reinstalling it. My guess is that this is to prevent people from buying it once, and then passing the CD on to others to copy the game and play it without buying it.

Despite this problem, "Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island" remains one of my favorite computer games of all time.

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"The game is afoot."

"Haunted Legends: The Undertaker" (2013) is a new Big Fish Games release. The Collector's edition of the game includes a bonus game, "Puppet Show, Mystery of Joyville". I've just bought the CD, and haven't had the time to play either of them yet, but I'm betting they will both be good games.

Here's some video of "Haunted Legends: The Undertaker":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoVm8YcDmEs

Here is the Collector's Edition bonus game on the CD, "Puppet Show, Mystery of Joyville":



Here is some brief video of the "Puppet Show, Mystery of Joyville" Big Fish game:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0F01eYf5vc

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"The game is afoot."

"Christmas Stories: Nutcracker" (2013) is another Big Fish game that I recently picked up. I have barely started the game, but so far it looks like a pretty good one.

Here's some video of game play:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CssJjgpifv8

The collector's edition CD includes a bonus game, "Azada, Ancient Magic", which I haven't tried out yet.



Here's a short video of some of "Azada, Ancient Magic" game play. It looks pretty good to me...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExEfPtGBY0c

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"The game is afoot."

"The Lost Kingdom Prophecy" is one of the 15 games on the "Immortal Legends" CD. It's a stupid "Jewel Quest" type of game. It's definitely not the type of game I normally like to play, however I saw it as a challenge to beat Michael's top score of one million that the game CD said was the best of the top ten scores. So, I wasted a lot of time playing the game, and gradually moved my way up it's leader board. As time went by, I figured out strategies to make lots of points.

Michael and his 1,000,000 points is now number 2 on the game's leader board, and Cloudy is number 1, with 10,805,645 points.

(I am sure that Michael is totally ficticious, and his score and the other nine top ten players are just made up.)

For kicks, I challenge anybody, who ever plays this game to get a higher score than mine.

Here is some video of "The Lost Kingdom Prophecy" game play:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lvwEAtu5jM

(Yep, it's really a dumb game.)

p.s. I chose to play the six-sided, honeycomb type of tiles version of the game. (There are other versions of the tiles you can choose to play.)

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"The game is afoot."

I thought I had a lot of video games until I read this today:

"Buffalo man's 10,607 video games secure Guinness title"...



http://www.tricities.com/news/article_5 ... f6878.html

Don't worry guys, I'm not giving up. I haven't counted all of mine yet, but I don't think that it is beyond the realm of possibility for me to catch this guy.

p.s. Before you guys and gals toss out your old computer games, send me a private message, and I'll tell you how you can send them to me. (I'll pay the postage.)

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"The game is afoot."

"Azada: Ancient Magic" is a Big Fish game that is worth playing. It has a large number of levels, each based on a theme derived from a classic book. It's different from all of the games I have played over the years, and is pretty darn challenging. First of all you aren't given a whole lot of instruction on what you need to be doing. Game play only allows you two hints on each book game you are working on, and the puzzles, that you must complete to be able to move on in the game, are sometimes difficult, and you are NOT allowed to skip them.

I finished this game today, but I must admit that there was many a time, when I thought that I was done for.

If you are an experienced computer game player, I highly recommend this game to you. Believe me, even the best of you won't waltz through it.

p.s. A word of advice, do NOT use up your two hints early in any of the book games, if it isn't absolutely necessay, save them for the end, just in case you are really stuck.

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"The game is afoot."

"Cursed Fates: The Headless Horseman" comes on a "Legacy Games" multiple game CD. It's a darn good game, and I highly recommend it. It does have hidden object scenes, and most of the hidden objects are really easy to find. However, all of the hidden object scenes taunt you with a few that are nearly impossible to find, after you have found the easy ones. (Word of advice, if you want to get special recognition at the end of the game, try to find all of the hidden objects, without using any hints. I was able to complete the game twice, after the first time, and never needed to use a hint. I think most of you could do it too.)

The game involves much more than hidden object scenes. It throws many puzzles at you that you should be able to solve without having to hit the "skip" button. (I guess they must not be too hard, because I solved all of them.)

However, the best aspect to this game is the problem solving. You have to remember where problems were that you couldn't solve, because nothing in your inventory would do it for you, when you first encountered them. When you acquire new items in your inventory go back to them, and even if none of the new items in your inventory are obvious solutions to solving the problem, try them all, and you might get a pleasant surprise a few times.

You need to find as many golden horseshoes as you can, while playing the game. They will be hidden in both regular game play, as well as the hidden object scenes. As I understand it, there are 72 of the golden horseshoes in the game to find. After playing the game three times the most I ever could find was 53. How many golden horseshoes you find will not effect game play, but will be important after the game is over, and you use them to buy trophies. (I got to buy all of the trophies.)

Here's some video of the game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i6Rjam8hAA

p.s. I believe that Big Fish games has swallowed this one up too, and now it is in their stable of games.

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"The game is afoot."

It's starting to look as if not many of you guys and gals play many computer games these days. However, I'm going to try to tempt you to try some of the games I've recommended.

Here's the deal, send me a private message that tells me the name of one of Cloudy's recommendations that you would like to play. I'll pick the request that I like best, will buy it for you, and have it sent to your house, providing that it is one that doesn't cost too much, is still available, and one that I think is worth playing. Play the game, post what you thought about it, and tell us how you did on it, and I will provide you with a nice surprise.

(I no longer have the luxury of being able to spend unlimited funds on my friends, so I will have to meter this deal out as finances permit me. I'm thinking that I can probably handle one person a month.)

p.s. This is NOT another one of Cloudy's jokes.

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"The game is afoot."

"A Vampyre Story" (2008) is an Adventure Company game that I just started playing today. My experience has been that most Adventure Company games are good, and so far this one looks pretty good. (There are NO stupid hidden object scenes, though you will have to find objects to use in regular game play.) It's a little difficult to get started in the game until you begin to figure out the style of game play that the creators of it are throwing at you with the problems that you need to solve to move on. In many ways it is reminiscent of the "Monkey Island" games as what you need to do, and what objects in your inventory that you need to use are not always easy to figure out logically. A lot of "out of the box" wild ass guessing, and "trial and error" banging your head against the wall will be very frustrating for those of you, who are impatient.

Here are a few tips:

1- Talking to some non-human things and objects will often give you important information.

2- Combining things in inventory is needed at times.

3- A lot of back tracking to places you have left is necessary.

4- Some of the things you need to find for your inventory are easy to overlook.

5- You will need to return to some of those, whom you thought you had exhausted your conversation with, and sometimes they will give you more information.

6- Many times you will think you have come to a dead end, and there is nothing more that you can do. However, there always is. You have just overlooked something, or haven't figured something out that requires some "out of the box" creative thinking.

7- Learn when to use your flying power, and when to get help from Mona's little vampire bat pal, Froderick.

(I'm sure that there are more tips I could give you, but these are enough for now.)

This is not a game for beginners. It's a tough one, and I might suggest that anyone, who plays it, use a walkthrough at the beginning to get started. Not to cheat, but to get a feel for how the game play is going to go.

Here is some video of some game play:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itfOY6tcWWQ

p.s. "A Vampyre Story" has a lot of humorous dialog, some of which is a wee bit suggestively salty at times.

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"The game is afoot."

Long ago on this thread DANTE told me that he thought that more guys than gals played computer games, because most of the protagonists were males. Even though DANTE probably ranks close to Henry Kissinger, as the smartest person in the world, I continue to think he is wrong on this. As most of you should have figured out, I play a lot of computer games, and my personal experience has been that female protagonists WAY outnumber males in the games I have played. Mona in "A Vampyre Story" is yet one more in a very long list of games that I have played, where a gal is the main character, who figures things out and leads the way through the game.

Anyone have any thoughts or comments on this?

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"The game is afoot."

"Legacy Games" puts out many multiple game CDs. They are in the racks at Walmart everywhere. At first I passed them over as just cheap, dumb games, until I bought one and tried the games out. Yeah, they aren't expensive, but they ain't dumb. They're pretty darn good, despite the fact that they throw a hidden object scene at you every once in a while. They involve a lot of problem and puzzle solving. I recommend them to those of you, who don't mind having your intelligence challenged.

Here's a list of the one's I've played:

1- "Margrave: The Blacksmith's Daughter"

2- "The Beast of Lycan Isle"

3- "Alchemy Mysteries"

4- "Mercy of the Gallows"

5- "Cursed Fates - The Headless Horseman"

6- "Dark Mysteries - The Soul Keeper"

7- "Infected - The Twin Vaccine"

8- "Mirror Mysteries"

9- "Nightmare on the Pacific"

10- "The Stanwick Mystery 1"

11- "The Stanwick Mystery 2"

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"The game is afoot."

"Nightmare Adventures: The Witch's Prison" is a Big Fish game. It has NO hidden object scenes, and there is very little finding stuff to use. It doesn't lead you off into a myriad of rooms and places that you have to wander around. It involves very little backtracking. So far this all sounds pretty good, however this is a very difficult game. (The early part of the game does require finding quite a few things.)

The game primarily involves puzzle solving. This is what makes this game so tough. When you encounter a puzzle, you get virtually NO clues or instructions as to what you need to do to solve it. Yes, the game does give you clues, but they are hidden in places you have already been in the form of vague riddles, which give you little idea as to which puzzle the vague riddle clues apply to. Some rooms and places will have two or three puzzles to solve.

This is NOT a game for beginners. It is a game for those, who enjoy having their brains challenged, and don't mind spending the time to let their brains figure difficult things out.

Here's some video of the game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQtRtqHHuLE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd578L-47XU

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"The game is afoot."

"Fate's Carnival" is a new "Big Fish" release. I played it for the first time today, and I will say that this is NOT a game for beginners. There are a few (very few) hidden object scenes. The game is pretty much nothing but solving puzzles. These puzzles are some of the hardest that I've encountered. What you have to do to solve them is often just a guess. If you think you're smart, and can figure anything out, this is the game for you. Good luck.

Here's some video of the game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baPJI2Lca3w

p.s. The Collector's Edition of the CD includes another Big Fish game, "F.A.C.E.S.". It also gives you a bonus level of "Fate's Carnival" to play.

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"The game is afoot."

Big Fish games has another new game out there of the shelves at WalMart. It's "Smithsonian: Hope Diamond". The Collector's Edition CD includes another Big Fish game, "Drawn: Dark Flight" as a bonus game. I haven't played it yet, but when I do, I'll post some feedback on the game here.

Here's some video of the game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0k1InGuEyGU

Even though I haven't played "Smithsonian: Hope Diamond" yet, just watching the video tells me that it's more than likely to be a very good game.

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"The game is afoot."

"Dark Dimensions: City of Ash" is yet another new Big Fish release that you should be able to find at WalMart. I started playing it today, and it's not a bad game. (Actually, it's been pretty easy so far, with the exception of a couple of puzzles that were hard to figure out what to do.) The Collector's Edition includes the bonus game "Mystery Trackers: Black Isle" on the CD.

Here's some video of game play:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYoHQRZPpNo

(Belated edit: I finished the game today, and I don't think anyone will have to resort to a walkthrough to save the town, but it's still kind of fun to play the game.)

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"The game is afoot."

Dud "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" video games dumped in landfill.

This story made the front page of the Rome Daily Sentinel" newspaper on March 22, 2014.

Here's a link to the "Film-makers stopped from digging landfill in search of Atari ET game" story:

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2 ... ri-et-game

Here's some game play video with commentary:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igD0C2f_2oQ

p.s. I say let them dig those games up. Hell, I don't have it, and would love to buy one to add to my collection of computer games, new and old, and in this case bad and good.

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"The game is afoot."

There are four more new Big Fish game releases. They are on just two CD, with two new games on each one. They are:

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"The game is afoot."